The Cheap Fix for the Pillow That Would Not Stay Cool

The cool side of the pillow lasts about four minutes. I have timed it. At 2 a.m., in the upstairs bedroom of our split-level in Kenosha, I flip the pillow, put my cheek down, feel that first wash of cool, and then it is gone and I am awake again.

I am 55. Night sweats started for me at 50 and had their worst stretch between 52 and 54, back when I was waking two to four times a night and changing my sleep shirt in the dark so I would not wake Greg. He sleeps hot and he snores and he keeps the thermostat at 70, which is a separate conversation. Our bedroom faces west, so the afternoon sun sits in that room like a houseguest who will not leave.

Before I bought anything, I tried the free stuff. Kicked a leg out from under the covers. Slept on a towel. Kept a gel pack in the freezer and woke up to a wet spot and a sore neck. None of it lasted past the first hour.

In March I bought a set of BEDELITE cooling pillowcases. Two queen cases, viscose from bamboo, envelope closure, machine wash. Of everything I have bought for this bedroom since, they were the cheapest, and they were the first. I put one on my pillow and gave the other to Greg, mostly so he would stop asking why I was buying pillowcases in March.

Here is what they are. Something that feels cool against your face and neck when you first lie down, and something you can flip to the other side after a flash for a second stretch of cool. Here is what they are not. A cooling device. Nothing on my side of the bed stays cold all night and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Some nights I still wake up. The difference is what happens next.

The pillowcase did not stop the flash. It bought me twenty minutes of cool on the other side, and twenty minutes was enough to fall back asleep.

The routine now. I go to bed and, if I am lucky, I am asleep before my brain starts its list. Around 2 a.m. the flash comes. I flip the pillow, and while my face cools off I reach for the fan remote on the nightstand. The fan is a Levoit Windi, about 13 inches tall, and it sits pointed at my pillow on a low setting. Between the cooler side of the case and the air moving across my face, I am usually back asleep inside ten minutes. Before the pillowcases I would be up for an hour, and once I am up for an hour I start thinking about the pharmacy and the 6 a.m. alarm, and then it is over.

I wash them every Saturday with the sheets. Weekly since March, and they still feel like they did the day I opened the package, which is more than I can say for the cotton cases they replaced. The envelope closure means there is no zipper under my cheek. Small thing. You notice it at 2 a.m. Greg uses the second case and has never mentioned it, which from Greg counts as a review. He still sleeps under his own heavy comforter. I do not know how.

One detail that matters more than it should: the size. Queen, 20 by 30, and they fit my pillows precisely instead of bagging at the corners the way the old ones did. The hem tucks inside, so the pillow does not slide out at 3 a.m. while I am thrashing around. That sounds like a small thing until you have spent a night fighting your own bedding.

I want to be honest about the nights it does not help. There are nights I still get up and change my shirt. There are nights when the flash is bigger than the pillowcase, and no bedding on earth fixes that. I talked to my doctor about the sweats, and I would tell any woman reading this to do the same. A pillowcase is a comfort item. It is not a treatment, and I would not want anyone to buy it thinking it is.

But for the cost of two pillowcases it is the best thing I have done for my sleep in five years. The mattress pad came in April, the blanket in May, the pajamas in June, the fan in July. All of them help, and none of them would work as well without the case under my cheek. The pillowcases came first, and if I had to hand one of the others back, it would not be the pillowcases.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Start with the BEDELITE pillowcase. It is the cheapest thing on the list, it is the easiest to try, and if it does nothing for you, you have two perfectly good spare cases for the guest room. Do not buy a new mattress over night sweats. Do not buy five things at once either, because then you will not know which one helped. Change one thing, sleep on it for two weeks, and decide. Wash it with your sheets like you would any other case. Nothing about this has to be complicated.

And if the sweats are wrecking more than a pillow can fix, talk to your doctor. I did. That is a different conversation than bedding, and it is worth having.